#Nimona discussion

[slightly-depressed-sloth]

Details I noticed in my third watch through of Nimona:

(I’m so normal about this movie)

Ballister’s sword originally had a G engraved on it which has been made into a makeshift B via scratchings.

My guess is that the sword either used to be Goldenloins or his families and Ambrosius gave it to Bal at some point as kids (given that Ambrosius is the only one I can think of with a G name)

Also about the sword: people have been pointing out the religious themes (like with the T in “true villain” looking like a crucifix) on that note the symbol on Bal’s sword in this shot looks a lot like the Christian fish

Ballister literally hopped the fence and broke into the knights practice to beat up a dummy as a kid before getting tackled by a bunch of knights

I just thought he was doing an obstacle course when I saw it before but nope! This makes everything about him becoming a knight so much funnier. Also the fact they have this footage? Amazing 100% Ambrosius has it saved to tease Bal with, no way he isn’t embarrassed about that

On a sad note; dang the institute really drilled in “do what I say, be a good kid and don’t break the rules” cause Bal as an adult didn’t even want to break the rules when his life was on the line vs as a kid breaking and entering into an ongoing knight practice while being chased

The director asks Ambrosius for a sword during the roof scene but Ambrosius looks at her and back at Ballister before telling her she needs to get to safety

He saw how angry she looked and knew she’d try to hurt Bal so he sent her away instead

Where Nimona as Ambrosius broke the wall on the miniature of the city being foreshadowing for the end of the movie

Bal batting Nimona off when she starts mocking him for caring about what Ambrosius thinks

So clearly a recurring conversation given Bal’s ‘whatever’ gesture here lmao

Ambrosius being really timid with this crowd of people and overly polite

He’s chasing down a criminal/the love of his life and barely even says excuse me 😭😭 and he half heartedly asks them to move before immediately folding and giving an autograph, we love a man whose great at public speaking but still has social anxiety

Ambrosius’ eye roll as soon as Todd shows up

(He’s so done with him)

Todd’s actual name being Thodeus

Idk why I just assumed this was a different guy the first watch through

[voidpumpkin]

seeing analyses of nimona is fun because they have really good insights and are analysing every inch of this movie but in virtually all of them there is a gaping hole where the very obvious messages and metaphors in regards to race and racism in this film lay.

Like tell me, do you believe the story of a brown man, brought in by a black woman in an attempt to fix the systemic issues in a system where ancestry is valued over merit, is framed for the murder of said black woman by a white woman who is fueled by paranoia that a black woman’s efforts might upend the system, the supposed threat this brown man and of dangers that don’t exist and a desparation to fulfill the legacy of a white woman who is a literal metaphor for the way bigotry is taught (in particular homophobia/transphobia). And thus the brown man is villanised for something he didn't do and is forced to find support and companionship in another victim of the system, with this story ending with the white woman willing to destroy everything than let the brown gay man and a trans girl change the system/her mind, has absolutely no racial implications or messages surrounding race.

[arohusbandodododo]

movies like nimona and across the spiderverse makes me realize that I never want to see another live action movie again. The way you can utilize animation and make visuals so interesting, as well as the flow and colors, is just something you can't do with real people

[hashtagloveloses]

holding promare and nimona so close to my heart because movies where you are ostracized for your power that you cannot control so you use it to become a shapeshifting monster destroying the corrupt government, with sick ass animation, bitchin music, and canonical queerness, are the best in cinema

[fauvester]

ballister blackheart would have beat the shit out of ballister boldheart

[walrus150915]

The most random out-of-order Nimona headcanons I've scrambled out of my mind and put in my notes as coherent as I could bc there's a LOTTTT

• I don't think Nimona uses specific names to label her sexuality/gender. Was she in love with Gloreth? Maybe she was. Maybe she was not. Does she like boys? Who knows, she sure doesn't. What's her gender? Nimona. That's it

• I think Ballister did try to be the cis ally™ and figure out the label Nimona would use but she'd just shrug her shoulders and say "I don't know, boss, it seems like you care about it more than I do"

• And even though she's NOT a girl, she uses she/her pronouns because 💥YOUR PRONOUNS DON'T DEFINE YOUR GENDER💥 you may use she/her and not be a girl, he/him and not be a boy, I even saw cis people use they/them simply bc they're comfortable. And that's okay!

• Although she's comfortable with people calling her he/they/neopronouns you name it. Just. Not it/its. You know the reasons😬

• Nimona is left-handed and it's CANON actually I am SO HAPPY as a left-handed person she's just like me fr💥💥

• Nimona isn't a big fan of domestic bliss Ambrosius and Ballister spend most of their time in (plus they're very sappy and very much disgustingly in love, Nimona's stoic organism can't handle their mushiness for the dear life), she's like an independent cat I think: comes to hang out, eats, spends time with her father-not-really figures and goes away for weeks only to come back again. She travels the world my dudes✨

• I think she has a bunch of photos from the places she'd been to and talks about her adventures a lot!

• Nimona also is the best cook of the fam I'm afraid. Ballister cooks, like, the bare minimum to serve himself as a functioning adult (rice, salad, pasta, some meat like you know the deal) but nothing too complicated. Ambrosius is a nepo baby who's probably lived in palaces and mansions with dozens of servants do you really think he's good at cooking😭 as he distanced himself from the Institute and moved in with Bal I think he learnt to cook, still not great at it.

• Nimona though? SHE CAN DO *ANYTHING* like she's madly good at cooking. It might look like she's burning the kitchen down only to reveal that she was putting Gordon Ramsay to shame!

Speaking of BallBros

• Ballister's experience is close to a second gen immigrant. Ambrosius's experience is close to a third gen immigrant. They can't be immigrants bc of the context of the story?? I DON'T CARE☺

• Ambrosius doesn't speak his mother tongue except for like a few words or phrases he's heard at home. His older relatives probably make fun of him for it on family gatherings. His parents didn't teach him because they didn't want him to stick out (totally not self projecting here - yeah I'm a third gen immigrant hiii)

• Ballister tho? I think Urdu was his first language but he learned English along the way

• And it kinda mixes in his head so he forgets the words from both languages sometimes and replaces them with the word from the other one (HA my experience again)

• When he's experiencing hard emotions, be it anger, happiness, sadness, or is overwhelmed, he drops English entirely and just starts bantering in Urdu

• Ambrosius didn't know Ballister was bilingual but when he learnt it? He was amazed and I think... Kinda jealous because he didn't get to learn Korean himself (self projection yeahhhhhh)

• "You know your mother tongue? Damn! I wish I did too!"

• That said, Ballister has no idea how to shorten Ambrosius's name (WHAT THE HECK IS THIS NAME BRO WHAT ARE YOU, GOD'S FOOD???), so he sticks to Urdu endearments, "luv" (in the most British accent possible) and "darling"

People who say French/Spanish are the romantic languages are wrong LISTEN TO URDU OR INDIAN LANGUAGES OR ARABIC. THAT'S WHERE LOVE IS DUDE

• Ambrosius has learnt like a few words in Urdu and tries to rizz up Ballister by saying some basic words like "jaan", "mohabbat" and just😭😭😭 fails😭😭😭 because he's a cringefail man😭😭😭

I remember trying to ask out my (NOW EX😔) gf who's Italian by writing "will you be my girlfriend?" in Italian and I used GOOGLE TRANSLATION🧍‍♂️🧍‍♂️ SHE UNDERSTOOD THAT I USED GOOGLE AND POINTED IT OUT AS A JOKE BUT I CRINGED AT MYSELF SO HARD..... Ambrosius would totally do that too and Ballister would chuckle and pull him in a kiss bc he loves this cringefail man so much

• Ambrosius also serenades like I KNOW DAMN WELL HE DOES. He goes "this one's for you, Bal" with a wink and sings like the sappiest most disgusting love ballad ever and Ballister tries his best not to laugh because that's his beloved boyfriend but also like.... So cringe. So embarrassing😭😭 Nimona has more balls than her boss so she would outright say that it's cringe

• Also. I don't agree with people saying Ambrosius's a jock because have you seen this man?? He's a theatre kid. The worst kind of theatre kid. Even after not being a kid anymore he's still a theatre kid. BRO IS A HAMILTON FAN UNIRONICALLY, OF COURSE HE IS. He makes weirdass references to musicals and giggles like an idiot

• Can we agree that Ambrosius was an awakening for many teenagers because OOOOH BOY he sure would be mine. Some pop news youtube channel probably has a video of him reading the kingdom's equivalent of "thirst tweets", like yknow this type of vids😭😭

While we're on the topic of thirst tweets

• Diego the squire runs a fan page account with edits of Ballister like he's some pop celebrity

• He also may or may not write self-indulgent "Ballister x reader" fanfiction in his off duty time

• Also hc that when Ballister was on the run he saw some "WANTED" poster of him and hang up on the wall like yeah boy's crush is EMBARRASSING (can we blame him? I'm the same with Riz Ahmed)

• Todd would be on the "straight" side of their equivalent to TikTok. You know the ones with shirtless men with the same haircuts who think they're hot when in reality they're not?? That's what Todd and his friends are up to in their free time *throws up*

To wrap it all up NOT with Todd, some super random ones:

• Ballister and Ambrosius force Nimona to take her shoes off ("DO NOT bring your European nonsense in this ethnic household") in their house even though she doesn't even have boots on😭😭 it's just her skin😭😭😭 so she morphs her form to simply be shoeless😭😭😭😭

• Ambrosius knows how to tap dance. Idk don't question it I just think he does

• Nimona plays piano YEAH SHE DOES she's lived for 1000+ years man she can do anything

• Ballister's hair routine is "genetics, coconut oil n some prayers"

Yeah that's it I'll probably make a part 2 because it's not all... These characters have occupied my mind and won't let it go🧍‍♂️

[troythecatfish]

Here’s my personal recommendation of a YouTube video to check out:

[beingharsh]

nimona did a far better trans allegory than the supposed one in across the spider-verse. the fear and violence towards her aberrant body/existence was the literal foundation of their society and nimona spends the whole film dealing with that history. she is degendered, demonized, and the call for her extermination, painted as morally necessary and just, permeates everywhere. and even if someone is fine with her, like bal, it tends to be highly conditional: she needs to be easily legible as a girl for their comfort, and her shapeshifting has to be peripheral and unobtrusive.

she also calls for the destruction of their systems meanwhile gwen becomes a cop so yeah i'll take this trans girl instead

[withthewerewolves]

GoldenHeart Fix-it AU

Ok, so I know that everything between Ballister and Ambrosius needed to happen for themes, and parallels, and narrative foils, and all that freestyle jazz. I realize that changing this sort of ruins Ambrosius’s character, and makes Nimona a sidekick in her own story, and such. But consider this- 

It made me Sad. 

So what if an AU where Ambrosius is messed up by being the direct descendant of Gloreth in a slightly different way, and is a little less hinged as a result. 

The beginning goes down exactly as it does in the movie. The sword pommel lights up, the queen dies, Ambrosius swings his own sword. There’s a moment where it all freezes, Ballister still on his knees, gripping the place where his shoulder ends, big brown horrified puppy eyes locked with Ambrosius’s, begging for something (forgiveness? understanding? his arm back?) that Ambrosius can’t pull his scattered thoughts together long enough to give him. And then the jumbotron crashes between them, and when the dust clears, Ballister is gone. 

I don’t know exactly how long it is between the Night of Knights and when Nimona finds Ballister. It has to be long enough for him to:

a) find the hideout and equip it with what he needs 

b) design and build a prosthetic arm (using his nondominant hand)

and c) heal enough to install said arm. 

It also can’t be too long, because: 

a) the knights haven’t managed to track him down yet (perhaps this is giving them too much credit) 

and b) the story is still all over the news. 

I’m thinking this means less than a month, but not very much less. 

In the movie, Ambrosius spends this time doing…something unimportant. Crying in his room? Punching training targets until he can’t stand up? Researching survival rates for unintentional arm amputation? Doesn’t matter. In this AU, he spends it spiraling. He starts with one absolute: Ballister wouldn’t do anything bad. He saw the sword kill the queen with his own eyes, from much closer range than his nightmares would prefer. Alright. So why, then, WOULD Ballister do such a thing? 

He’s already struggled enough with the pressure to live up to Gloreth’s memory. We see that this sits heavy on his golden shoulders, and that both the Institute and the people put him on a pedestal. He’s seen the way the other trainee knights treat Ballister. We see that it bothers him, that Ballister instinctively holds him back from fighting Todd, as if this has happened before. We know that he knows that Ballister has worked harder than anyone, that he’s the best in their year, and that his lack of noble blood may (will) still ruin things for him. We know that he cares about protecting people, that he considers that to be a knight’s job. We see him choose to protect civilians, clearing the streets, when all the other knights rush to fight the monster. He can't be totally satisfied with the Institute’s training and ideology. 

He doesn’t eat (he can still smell the burning flesh as his sword cauterizes Ballister’s arm, even as he cuts through it). He doesn’t sleep (his dreams are nothing but green light and Ballister’s pleading eyes). He reads a lot of anti-monarchy blogs. Maybe he finds some futuristic-fantasy Karl Marx. Maybe there are some activists protesting systemic inequality and they have a website with a list of useful terminology and their definitions. He absolutely does not research mortality rates for unintentional arm amputation. He stops telling himself that has no clue where Ballister might have gone (maybe it's time to give up lying to himself altogether).

He leaves the Institute. He maybe says some imprudent things as he’s leaving ("Bal was right! Any system that allows you (Todd) to be a knight deserves to be brought down! Tyranny never wins for long!”). He sort of wants to leave his sword and armor behind, possibly with some amusing graffiti scratched into them, but he doesn’t know what Bal might be planning, if he might need it, and surely it’s symbolic, to attack the Institute using the tools of its oppression? On that thought, he does make one tiny detour on the way out. 

He finds Bal. There was only one place for him to be, once Ambrosius set aside the need to arrest him and let himself remember. I think it has to be before Nimona finds him, because Ballister puts on the new arm right before, and I want him not to be wearing it when he cautiously opens the door to his crumbling hideout to find Ambrosius framed in a shaft of late-afternoon sunlight, hair limp, eyebrow twitching like it used to before big exams, eyes maybe the tiniest bit wild. 

“Ambrosius?” Ballister is pretty sure he isn’t hallucinating. Yeah, the initial wound was rough, and the shock got to him, and he definitely had a fever for awhile there. But he’s been lamentably rooted in reality for weeks now, and he thought he was over that little mental hitch every time he heard a noise in the next room and realized anew that Ambrosius wasn’t the one making it. 

“Thank Gloreth,” Ambrosius says, because he may not have researched unintentional arm amputation but he does have an overactive imagination, and here Ballister is, upright and maggot-free and wielding a broken mead bottle. 

He has a speech planned. He’d recited different parts of it over and over on his way here. There were some good bits in there. 

Instead, he sees the gap where Ballister’s arm should be and loses the structural integrity of his skeletal system. “Darkness Beyond, I chopped off your arm.” His voice is mostly air pretending to be sound. 

“Uh,” Ballister says. “Yeah.” 

“I need to sit down.” 

Ambrosius maybe clanks a little as he sits (it’s not a fall if you state your intention before you hit the ground), but it’s ok because Bal is wearing his armor too (except for the right vambrace - nope he can’t think about that or he��ll vomit) and he clanks too when he crouches in front of Ambrosius, filling his entire visual field (the edges will come back eventually, he can still see the important part). 

“I CHOPPED off your ARM.” 

“Are you here to -” 

“I chopped OFF your ARM.” 

“You were disarming a weapon -”

“Who even does that? Who chops off people’s arms?”

“You were just following our training -” 

“Arm chopping is NOT a LOVE LANGUAGE.” 

“Forget the arm!” This catches enough of Ambrosius’ attention to drag him back into himself, because Ballister doesn’t actually get upset that often. He can’t afford to, not where the other knights or their trainers might see. He especially can’t afford to, when it’s just the two of them and Bal has to shove all the anger back down himself. 

“I don’t think I will ever forget the arm,” he says, but he smells Ballister’s sweat, like after they used to run miles in heavy armor, instead of roasting meat. He sees confusion and concern in Ballister’s eyes, instead of that horrible entreaty he never managed to answer. 

Ballister clunks to the ground beside him, back to the stone wall, missing arm shielded by his body. “No. I don’t know that I will, either.” 

Ambrosius doesn’t know what thoughts Ballister is caught in, but he can’t help drinking in his silhouette, familiar and beloved and so much more fragile than he’d ever imagined. 

“Can you ever forgive me?” he asks, even though he told himself he wouldn’t. 

Ballister turns toward him enough that Ambrosius can see the bitter quirk of his lips. “For the arm? Or for thinking I would kill Queen Valerin?” 

The last minutes have been the closest Ambrosius’s mind has been to still since that series of frozen seconds after Ballister’s sword flashed, followed by his own, but now it screeches to a halt. “You….didn’t?” 

Ballister’s head swivels slowly to look at him, like in one of those scary movies Bal likes so much. 

“Why not?” Ambrosius asks. It isn’t the question he means to ask. 

“WHY NOT?!” 

“I mean - because the monarchy is an outdated system that prioritizes bloodlines over ability - and the whole idea of nobility is classist - and the other trainees were awful to you just because you grew up on the streets - and why do we even HAVE kids growing up on the streets, do you know how much the Institute’s operating budget is? We could fund a million orphanages! Or -” 

“You think I would kill the Queen because some assholes were mean to me?” Bal is not tamping his anger down now. Ambrosius reminds himself sternly that Bal doesn’t like being angry, so it’s rude to think about how hot it makes him look. 

“No! I knew you’d have other reasons!” 

“The Queen is the one who LET me train to be a knight, even though I’m common born!” 

“She shouldn’t have had to let you, you more than earned it -”

“So you thought I would KILL someone?!” 

Ambrosius doesn’t have anything to say to that. He’s busy trying to re-sort all the stuff he JUST re-sorted to make room for Ballister killing the Queen, to make room for him NOT to have killed her. Does that mean he should put it all back where it was? How can he, now that he’s seen? He isn’t sure he wants to. He slumps back against the wall. After a moment so does Bal. 

“So what…did happen?” 

Bal swallows hard, his nervous tell. He doesn’t look at Ambrosius. “I don’t know.” 

Ambrosius is running on fumes, and he’s had to reorder his worldview twice in a short period of time, but he does still have a brain under the fabulous hair. “Someone framed you.” 

Bal glances at him through the corner of his eye. He’s somehow both more open and more closed off than Ambrosius has ever seen him. “Yeah.” 

“Were you the target? Or the Queen?” Yeah, he’s been reading the anti-monarchy blogs, but no one seems to have any specific issues with Queen Valerin. She’s fine, as far as queens go. No one has mentioned assassinating her. Actually none of them seem to have any plans whatsoever. But the activists have plenty of plans, and they didn’t talk about assassinating her either. Isn’t there supposed to be a different internet, just for criminals? Maybe they talked about it there? 

“Gotta be the Queen,” Bal says. “Which means the real killer is still out there.” 

"Hm," Ambrosius says, because he's thinking about all the stuff people have been saying about Ballister, both online (where he can scroll past it) and in the Institute mess hall (where he cannot). He's wondering if Todd, who is unfortunately not as stupid as he looks, could have pulled off something like this, when he feels a light touch against the outside of his thigh, where his chainmail doesn't cover. 

It's the first time Bal has touched him since before the ceremony. It's just the barest brush of the side of his hand, and could've been accidental except for how it's carefully placed so he can feel Bal's body heat through the cloth of his trousers, and how he knows that Ballister doesn't touch people by accident. 

Ambrosius can't tear his eyes away from Bal's hand. He's not wearing his gloves (glove). The skin on the back is cracked like it gets in the cold season, unless Ambrosius sits on Bal and applies the moisturizing cream himself. The nails are ragged and bitten close to the quick, and something dark is trapped under them, possibly the same something that's streaked along the base of his thumb. 

How's he supposed to clean under his fingernails with one hand? How is he supposed to WASH his hands, for that matter? Ambrosius quickly stops thinking about it. He’s here now. He'll clean them himself. 

"Do you believe me?" Ballister asks, and Ambrosius darts his gaze up to Bal's face. It's turned away, as if he can't stand to see the answer to that question. 

Bal's chin is scratchy where he hasn't been maintaining his facial hair, but Ambrosius revels in how warm and alive he feels under his fingertips as he tilts Bal's face toward him. "Bal," he says. "Of course I believe you." 

Something in Bal's eyes breaks, or heals, or cleaves like a sword through bone. He slumps, suddenly looking like a teenager playing dress up in the huge armor he'd worked so hard for. Ambrosius wishes he wasn't wearing his own, because Bal tips so that his head is buried in Ambrosius’s chest, and that would be so much more satisfying for both of them without a chestplate. 

Ambrosius buries his face in Bal’s hair (lank and unwashed, but smelling so much like BAL that he wants to roll around in it) and maybe cries a little. Bal maybe cries a little too. Ambrosius makes a mental note to get them both out of their armor as soon as possible because he needs to hold Bal properly, feel the warm living weight of him, maybe lay down and pull Bal over him like a blanket, revel in the soft puffs of Bal’s breathing, the chill of his toes, the flutter of his eyelashes against Ambrosius’s skin, the physical realness of him. All the little details his imagination could never get right. 

Probably he does get to do this. Probably he gets them bathed and wearing fresh clothes (he probably packed a duffel bag from their shared dorm room), and maybe feeds them both some canned beans he finds in Bal’s mostly empty cupboards. Probably Bal shows him the prosthetic arm, which is nearly finished, and lets him marvel over the genius of it. Probably he says that once they’ve got Bal’s name cleared he should become an engineer, what was he doing wasting a mind like that on being a knight? 

Probably they get to take a nap, pressed together on the couch. Probably Ambrosius is horrified anyone has been sleeping on that biohazard, let alone someone with a healing wound. Probably he’s too tired to come up with anything better. 

If we’re kind, we could maybe give them just this one sleep without any nightmares. They need to be firing on all cylinders, because they’re going to be woken by a loud banging at the tower door. 

I personally think it would be very funny if Ambrosius is completely on board with all of Nimona’s plans. He probably pushes for non-violence if possible, and then when that fails, for at least leaving innocent civilians out of it. Nimona isn’t convinced the civilians ARE innocent, but Ambrosius has some ideas for breaking stuff that intrigue her. Bal is horrified by the entire conversation, and has to be talked out of just going to the Institute and explaining himself. It works this time though, because Ambrosius knows exactly how unreceptive the Director is going to be. 

Todd is the one leading the search this time, so he probably leads them in completely the wrong direction while our heroes talk to the squire. But if they do have a confrontation, it’s worse. There’s no intention to arrest them unharmed. There’s no chance to explain. No relationship talk over locked swords. He’s got the knights shooting to kill. 

I’m not sure how Nimona reveals her shapeshifting. Probably Ambrosius is just as upset as Bal is, but he and Nimona are anarchy buddies. He makes himself take a step back and examine his initial reaction, possibly while narrating his thought process. If he didn’t condemn her for skewering guards on her rhino horn, he can’t condemn her for HAVING a rhino horn, can he? 

Maybe the happy ending for them is this AU is different from the happy ending in canon. Maybe after they release the video of the Director, they do set out together to explore the world beyond the Wall, all three of them. But it isn’t because they’re afraid of the kingdom or the people in it. It’s because they aren’t tied to the kingdom anymore. They’ve all moved past the boxes the kingdom would try to put them in. They don’t NEED the kingdom anymore. None of them are going to be alone. 

And adventure awaits. 

[rotzaprachim]

I think people getting their politics from animated movies for children is so annoying. That being said I think Nimona was Unironically one of the most ideologically complex and serious treatments of modern antisemitism I’ve ever seen.

[optionalcausality]

Quick tangent here, but.

The Princess Bride is one of my favorite swashbuckling movies, and it has a sword fight that is such a cool example of what a sword fight can be, that a whole generation of kids got inspired to learn the history and the fighting techniques. It reinvigorated the sport.

It's not trying to be an accurate sword fight. It aimed to be dramatic -- to be the vector of character development and musical turns and dramatic reversals and backstory reveal -- and it absolutely understood the assignment.

Nimona might be doing something like that. I still have a way to go before the end. But what it's really conveying isn't as much about specific lines of dialogue.

It's saying, "Hey, viewer? You aren't alone, even if it feels like no one else understands what you've been through. And sometimes people like you will tell stories when they grow up, stories that help others like you to know that they aren't alone."

[therabbitthatpostthings]

[bookcub]

reread nimona by nd stevenson in prep for my sff class and oh i think it is a fantastic addition to the the class!! a. obviously it has scifi and fantasy elements b. the characters are the best c. we can talk about graphic novels as a form of media d. we can talk about the history of media placing queer people and disabled people in the role of the villians e. it asks the question of what is good and what is evil f. it encourages people to question authority g. it has one of the best friendships at its center and h.

[chaos--gremlin]

i don’t know what’s scarier

i dont know if anyone else has talked about this, i just wanted to ramble, might even delete later if i feel funky (tw: mentions of suicide / suicidal ideation. i will not censor words, for ease of those who mute them)

so nimona. as a transmasc person with a fluid identity, the movie nimona shot me in the fucking heart

the first time nimona says “i don’t know what’s scarier”, i felt seen. i have never felt more seen by a movie before. 

“i don’t know what's scarier: the fact that everyone in this kingdom wants to run a sword through my heart, or that sometimes, i just wanna let ’em.”

the first time nimona says this, it is an indication that she is passively suicidal. she won’t kill herself, but sometimes, she wants to die. she wants to be killed. that is what passive suicidal ideation is. 

https://www.psycom.net/depression/passive-suicidal-ideation

its something that many people experience, including me, but it generally isn't talked about in movies. thats why i felt so seen.

the next time nimona says  “i don’t know what’s scarier”, she is actively suicidal. she has reached her breaking point and is ready to fall on the sword of gloreth’s statue. that is the emotional climax of the movie, a damn good one that made me ugly cry.

“i don’t know what’s scarier” being used to show how she is passively suicidal, and then repeated word for word when she is about to actively commit suicide, was so fucking powerful to me

because its true, those thoughts are scary. to feel hunted for being different (trans) and wanting to die because of it. it hurts and its really fucking scary. it resonates with me deeply.

thats all folks, i promise im okay <3

[spookyc]

Having watched Nimona recently, I feel it's important for me, as a trans person, to discuss a certain criticism I've seen regarding the movie. A criticism I take great issue with, and one that I think needs to be addressed. And that is the supposed issue of Nimona being "too blatant" about its queerness, that its message is "ham-fisted" in nature. And that bothers me. It bothers me that people think that something that is blatant is inherently bad. It bothers me that people think its message is ham-fisted simply because you don't have to go searching for it. Something being obvious isn't inherently negative and I'm tired of that sentiment being thrown around like it's fact. Because subtlety isn't an inherent good either, neither are good or bad entirely. And frankly, when it comes to queerness in media, the only way it will have an impact is if it's blatant. Especially regarding transness.

Because, if you'll allow me to be completely blunt and candid, we don't live in a society where subtle queerness can be appreciated. We live in a society that wants people like me eradicated for simply existing. Laws are being passed continously that discriminate against us and prevent us from living comfortably. We live in a world rn where we either have to suffer in silence or fucking die. That is the reality trans people live in. So if those that hate us are given any indication that they can disregard us, ignore us, pretend we don't exist, they will take that opportunity everytime. We've seen this with Across the Spiderverse, where even trans flags and trans colors splashed across Gwen will still lead to people denying her transness.

Because at the end of the day, Spiderverse is still about Miles Morales, and it's still about Spiderman, and Spiderman's story isn't inherently queer. So they'll make every excuse to ignore Gwen's transness, or they'll simply ignore her story to focus on the rest of what ATSV has to offer. Ultimately, it can still be overlooked and enjoyed without acknowledging that aspect. But that isn't the case for Nimona. Nimona is a queer story with queer themes and queer characters, queerness is baked into the very core of what Nimona is. To not acknowledge those aspects is to blatantly misinterpret the movie, you cannot divorce Nimona from being gay, and trans, and nonbinary, and genderfluid and everything that falls in between. It is blatant, and really, I think that's what we need rn. We need something so unapolegetically queer that people can't ignore it, they can't disregard it, and they can't look away from it. Because then that means they have to acknowledge us, that they can't wipe us out, that we are here and we are loud and we WILL make our voices known. Being quiet helps no one, but being loud is what inspires change, it's what makes people uncomfortable, and I say we make them as uncomfortable as possible.

For every bigot that wants us dead, that thinks we're monsters and unfit for society, you will have the bigots who understand that they're wrong. You will have the bigots who change the way they see us, and might even recognize how harmful they were being. You don't get that by keeping your head down and hinting towards a vague metaphor that a character might be trans, because with how things are right now, it won't be enough to make an impact. You do that by making a metaphor so obvious it bypasses subtext and becomes the text, you do that by having characters like Nimona, who simply wish to exist without everyone pestering her about who she is, she's Nimona, and that's the only answer she or anyone should have to give. You do that by intiating a rallying cry, to inspire trans people, kids or otherwise, and to state plain and clearly that we see you, and that you aren't alone.

So yeah Nimona is very blatant in its queerness, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

[fluentisonus]

so wild to look & see nimona trending in the year of our lord twenty twenty three